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The Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival will explore and celebrate the
life and works of William Shakespeare for the 24th consecutive year,
with multiple events September 29-November 4.

Grand Valley State University’s annual festival is the oldest and
largest Shakespeare festival in Michigan and attracts more than 6,000
guests each year.

The Tempest

To kick off this year’s festival, students will bring to life what is
believed to be one of the Bard’s final solo-written plays. Shakespeare
wraps themes of love, betrayal, vengeance, forgiveness, redemption and
magic into “The Tempest.”

In “The Tempest,” Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan and a powerful
sorcerer, has survived 12 years marooned on a remote island with his
daughter, Miranda, when the men who cheated him sail within reach of
his fearful magic. He conjures a tempest that shipwrecks his enemies
and leaves them at his mercy, but the story becomes more complex when
Miranda falls in love with a castaway prince, and the island’s native
inhabitants, Caliban and Ariel, frighten and amaze the mariners. Will
Prospero exact his revenge or learn that “the rare action is in virtue
than in vengeance?”

Performances of “The Tempest” will take place September 29 and 30,
and October 5, 6 and 7, at 7:30 p.m., and October 1 and 8, at 2 p.m.
All performances will take place in Louis Armstrong Theatre, in the
Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for Performing Arts. Sign language
interpretation will be available during the October 5 performance.

Tickets are $14 for adults, $12 for seniors and GVSU alumni, faculty
and staff members, and $6 for students and groups. Five percent of
total ticket sales for performances of “The Tempest” will be donated
to the American Red Cross to contribute to hurricane relief efforts.

“We feel we could not perform a play called ‘The Tempest’ that begins
with a devastating storm that shipwrecks sailors without acknowledging
the catastrophic storms of this year and the devastation caused to so
many areas,” said Jim Bell, Shakespeare Festival director.

Shakespeare Behind Bars

“The Tempest” will be directed by guest artist Curt Tofteland,
founder and producing director of Shakespeare Behind Bars Inc., the
oldest North American Shakespeare program that takes place in
medium-security prisons.

The award-winning documentary, “Shakespeare Behind Bars,” traces the
success of the program while demonstrating the transformational power
of performing Shakespeare's works. A public screening of the
documentary and a discussion with Tofteland will take place October 4,
at 7 p.m., in Louis Armstrong Theatre.

Scholar-in-Residence

This year’s Shakespeare Festival will welcome guest
scholar-in-residence, John Andrews, founder and president of the
renowned Shakespeare Guild. Andrews also served as the resident
scholar during Grand Valley’s first Shakespeare Festival in 1994.

Andrews will give a public lecture in conjunction with performances
of “The Tempest,” entitled “Why Shakespeare's 'Brave New World'
Continues to Resonate: Reflections on 'The Tempest.'" His
presentation will take place September 29, at 4 p.m., in the Kirkhof
Center’s Pere Marquette Room. The lecture will be preceded by a
reception at 3 p.m. and include a performance of this year’s festival
Greenshow: “The Devil is an Ass.”

Bard to Go presents "The Wonder of Will: This is Your Afterlife!"

Grand Valley’s traveling Shakespeare troupe, Bard to Go, also returns
this year with a new, 50-minute production, “The Wonder of Will: This
Is Your Afterlife!”

This year’s production asks what would happen if the Bard was brought
back to life and taken on an adventure through his most famous plays.
The production includes scenes from “Hamlet,” “Richard III,” “The
Comedy of Errors,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Romeo and Juliet,”
“Macbeth,” and “The Merchant of Venice.”

Bard to Go will perform for students at various secondary schools
throughout Michigan in October and November, and offer multiple public
performances as well. The troupe will perform as an ArtPrize entry
from noon-5 p.m. on September 30 and October 1 at the Gerald R. Ford
Museum in Grand Rapids.

Bard to Go will also perform at 1 p.m. on November 4 in Loosemore
Auditorium, located in the DeVos Center on the Pew Grand Rapids
Campus. The performance will follow the Campus Student Competition
Awards Ceremony.

For more information about this year’s Grand Valley Shakespeare
Festival, contact Bell at bellja@gvsu.edu, or visit gvsu.edu/shakes. To purchase tickets
for “The Tempest,” call the Louis Armstrong Theatre Box Office at
(616) 331-2300.